Under the Covers

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (But Didn't Know to Ask)

5 of 9

The Other Side of Desire

By Daniel Bergner

224 pages;
Ecco

The people you'll meet! A family man agonizingly obsessed with feet; a clothing designer and "evangelical sadist," sheathed in skintight latex, who believes she's saving the world; a telecom techie with a yen for his preteen stepdaughter; an art director attracted to disabled women who are (quite literally) not all there. And no, these are not monsters, but outcasts whose first, melancholy question to journalist Daniel Bergner is often "What...are you doing here with me?" Girded with scientific data about the nature of sexual identity, The Other Side of Desire is a foray into extreme passion, in quest of the human soul.